Imagine North East

Benwell & North Shields

CULTURE AND THE ROLE OF CIVIC ENGAGEMENT ACROSS THE IMAGINE PROJECT

Wednesday, 7 September 2016

Millennium Gallery, Arundel Gate, Sheffield, S1 2PP

The annual Imagine event was hosted by the cultural work package this year and consisted of exhibits and workshops from each work package on the theme of everyday culture and voice. Photos of the event can be seen below and were taken by Steve Pool. From the historical work package, Andrea Armstrong and Ben Kyneswood organised exhibits and two workshops:

Re-gilding the ghetto: pictures of life in North East England from the 1970s to the present day (Andrea Armstrong, Gary Craig, Yvonne Hall and Kath Smith) The aim of the workshop was to critically discuss and examine a range of arts and cultural artefacts from the 1970s to 2016. The starting point for the Imagine North East research was the National Community Development Project (CDP). The CDP was an experimental, anti-poverty initiative of the 1970s, funded by the Home Office and located in 12 areas. We focused on the two CDPs in the North East – Benwell (West End of Newcastle) and North Tyneside (located in North Shields). The CDPs conducted detailed research to uncover causes of unemployment, industrial decline, poor housing, poverty and inequality in the areas where they were located. They used the insights from research, and the knowledge and energies of local people, to mobilise radical community action around housing, jobs, welfare rights, play and many other issues. They used a range of arts/cultural activities in their campaigns to bring about change, including detailed and critical reports in a ‘readable journalistic’ style that included many photos, cartoons, newspaper cuttings etc. They also used film and theatre to engage people and raise awareness. The national CDP employed professional photographers to chronicle the areas in the 1970s and we have a selection of black and white photos taken by Ken Grint and Derek Smith. While starting with the past, Imagine North East also looked at the process of change over the past 40 years and the issues facing communities today in a climate of economic austerity and welfare cuts. Twelve community partners (from Benwell and North Shields) embarked on projects and used a variety of arts and cultural methods to explore the history, present and future of their neighbourhoods. In this workshop we heard presentations from Gary Craig (former Assistant Director, Benwell CDP in the 1970s) and Yvonne Hall (recently with Cedarwood Trust, N. Shields) and Kath Smith (Remembering the past, resourcing the future, N. Shields) They talked about the use of arts and culture during the time of Benwell CDP (Gary) and more recently as part of Imagine North East (Yvonne and Kath) in N. Shields. We then asked workshop participants to look at, compare and discuss pictures of life from the 1970s to 2016.

Photographic exhibition (Ben Kyneswood) Attendees were shown a series of photos of Coventry. Ben led the narrative about how the images fit together to tell a story and then asked participants to select two images. After discussing the images, participants were asked to write a narrative from the perspective of the people in the photo and sequence them with other photos to tell a story.

Community Development & Engagement in North Shields: From the National Community Development Project to ‘My Community’

Films made by community partners as part of their Imagine North East project and edited by Vincent Chu (Durham University) are now available on the Imagine playlist of Durham University. Follow the links below to see the films.

On Thursday 21 January 2016 we held the Imagining Benwell Workshop and Exhibition at the Discovery Museum in Newcastle upon Tyne. The title of the workshop was Community Development in Benwell & the West End of Newcastle:From the National Community Development Project to ‘Our Place’ and Beyond and it was attended by 55 people (from academic, policy and practice backgrounds) who were either involved in Imagine/Imagine North East or interested in the research.

The aim of the workshop was to re-examine the achievements and challenges of the Benwell Community Development Project (CDP) of the 1970s, and consider the legacies and lessons for community development and engagement today. Sarah Banks (Principal Investigator of Imagine North East) opened the workshop with an introduction to Imagine North East, followed by an overview of the National Community Development Project of which Benwell CDP was one of twelve CDP projects in the 1970s. Following this, we heard the perspectives of former Benwell CDP workers: Ian Harford (former Director of Benwell CDP) spoke about setting up Benwell CDP and the significance of their research and analysis; Gary Craig (former Assistant Director on the Benwell CDP Action Team) spoke about the significant campaigns, including housing and industry and employment, then David Gray (former lawyer with the Benwell Law Project) spoke about the legal aspects of CDP work.

We then moved on to the post-CDP period and Judith Green (former Benwell CDP researcher) discussed how the CDP imagined the future; Fred Robinson (Durham University) provided an overview of subsequent regeneration initiatives in Benwell and the West End of Newcastle and Alan Townsend spoke about Benwell then and now by comparing census data from 1971 and 2011. These presentations were followed by questions and discussion before Michael McHugh (Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums) introduced the Imagining Benwell Exhibition in the Hub Space at the museum. Participants were invited to look at the exhibition over lunch.

After lunch, there were perspectives on community development and engagement. Andrea Armstrong (Durham University) gave an overview of research findings from residents, community workers and policy makers on ‘Community development and engagement in austerity’. This was followed by a short film extract from ‘Hopes and Fears’ – a film made for Imagine North East by young people involved in the Patchwork Youth project in Benwell. We then heard critical perspectives from local community organisations including Christine Irklis (Riverside Community Health Project), Shamshad Iqbal (Angelou Centre) and Andrew White (SkillsBridge) and Ruth Taylor (Pendower Good Neighbour Project) who spoke about Our Place.

Participants then had the choice of three roundtable discussions: Communities in Control? (faciliated by Andrea Armstrong); Forty years of urban policy – what can we learn? (facilitated by Fred Robinson and Patrick Harman) or The role of research in promoting and supporting communit development in urban neighbourhoods (faciliated by Sarah Banks and Kate Pahl).

Gathering back in the main room, the three groups fed back their key messages before we moved onto the final plenary of the day – Mae Shaw (Edinburgh University) spoke about Community development in austerity Britain, looking back, looking forward.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable event and here are some photos taken on the day.

It was the 3rd Annual Imagine Conference on Wednesday 9 September 2015 and this time it was Huddersfield’s turn to be the host. The conference title was ‘Doing research together across communities and universities’ and delegates (academics and community partners) were from the four Imagine work packages (social, historical, cultural and democratic). Keynote speakers were Ruth Levitas talking about Utopia as Method and Eric Lassiter and Beth Campbell talking about Collaborative Ethnography. Each work package offered two workshops. Ben Kyneswood and Jason Tilley gave a workshop on ‘How austerity affects co-production’ – offering their perspectives on work in Coventry for WP2. We also gave a workshop, entitled ‘Whose Community? Whose History? issues and challenges in doing community-based historical research’. This involved Sarah Banks, Andrea Armstrong and Vincent Chu from Durham University and Yvonne Hall (speaking about the Cedarwood Trust Imagine NE project), Ruth Taylor (Pendower Good Neighbour Project in Benwell) and Kath Smith (Remembering the Past, Resourcing the Future). Here are some photos of the conference taken by Steve Pool